During interpersonal exchanges, the facial expressions of people can reveal what they are thinking. For this reason, it has been commonly assumed that the chief benefit of video teleconferencing is that it allows conference participants to see the person who is speaking. However, research at the Johns Hopkins University and at Bell Laboratories in the mid-1970's failed to demonstrate that there is a significant benefit to seeing the person who is speaking—perhaps one of the reasons why two-way “picture telephone” systems never achieved the market penetration that had been predicted for them. By contrast, research has demonstrated that a tremendous advantage of video teleconferencing versus audio only is that it provides a feedback mechanism by which participants may judge the reactions of other participants to a speaker's message. Unfortunately, individuals with impaired vision can not discern the facial expressions of people during a video teleconference. This puts them at a disadvantage compared to the other participants in the video teleconference.
Within the art, the utilization of instant messaging, IM, and short-messaging signaling, SMS, has slowly started to replace voice communication. Unfortunately, these messages tend to be quite terse and consequently can be misunderstood. Within the realm of IM messages, it is known to select manually a cartoon character—commonly referred to as an “emoticon”—to indicate the mood of the sender. The cartoon character is then included as part of the IM message. Unfortunately, the selection of the cartoon character is left to the discretion of the sender and in addition, the sender has to include it. If the sender is in a hurry, the sender will often neglect to send the cartoon character indicating the emotional state of the sender.